Madeline Kahn, You're On

I can often come across as disparaging of the average American, and their decision making process. And I am frustrated by it. But I do realize that it’s not wholly their fault. Americans are busy, they’re tired, and they simply don’t have the time to pay attention the way it’s needed.

Productivity increases occur year after year. Every new technology creates a new efficiency. My primary job over the last decade and more was in process improvement. My job was to increase efficiencies, both through human and technological processes, with reasonable but not barricading checkpoints to ensure a greater output. In short, my job was to increase productivity in the workplace.

What about increasing productivity in our lives? Where does that come from?

Over the weekend Sarah Palin tried to explain the wardrobe malfunction. The problem is, for those of us long opposed to her and to independent undecideds, it’s just not good enough. It’s not the clothes, stupid. It’s the disingenuousness that is Sarah Palin. She no more said thanks but no thanks to a $150,000 wardrobe than she said thanks but no thanks to the bridge to nowhere. She said bring it on until it became unpopular and then kept the money anyway. She isn’t against earmarks, she requested more per capita than Obama ever did. The problem isn’t her clothes, it’s her shallowness. She’s like the kid caught with the cookie crumbs all over her, but still refuses to admit she raided the cookie jar.

Everything about this woman seems perfect until you scratch the surface. That’s the problem with the clothes. Not that she has them, but that she wasn’t honest about them. If her consignment shop clothes are good enough for her now, why did she ever jettison them in the first place? I’m sympathetic, as I wrote here, about her need for the clothes. What I have a problem with is how it’s approached. She allowed herself to be packaged and when it didn’t work, she blames the gift wrapping. If she’s such a maverick and willing to take on her own party, why would she cave so completely on something as simple as a wardrobe?

Nordstrom, Saks, Neiman’s, etc. all put these big tags on the more expensive clothes so that people can’t wear them once then return them. Now the campaign is claiming some or most of them have been returned. Remove the tag and you can’t return the item. Returning them after they’ve been worn is tantamount to shoplifting.

The Republican Party has underestimated the power of Internet communications. They are campaigning as if blogs, YouTube, Google News, and The Daily Show didn’t exist. And it’s biting them. Just like the bridge lie, this is the clothing lie (not to mention the science lie, provided to me by a former classmate who I won’t name because I don’t have his permission). And all of them could have been easily avoided.

Wouldn’t this have been better? “I listened to the people and once they made clear we didn’t want that bridge to nowhere I instead put the money towards more worthwhile projects. I hate earmarks but had to work with the system as it stood because that was the only way to get what was needed to get done. Knowing how broken the system is, I’m in a strong position to change it. See here, here, and there where I made change where I could. Now put me in a better position to make change where it matters.”

Or this: “The clothes? You’re seriously talking about my clothes? Of course I needed new clothes. Didn’t you see what happened to Hillary in the primaries where Glamour and People and all kinds of fashion magazines picked her apart? Didn’t she herself say, near tears, that she needed a lot of help (referring to hair dressers, stylists, and makeup artists) to get through each day? It’s tough to be a woman in politics. Hillary knows what I’m talking about. Yeah, they bought me clothes and yeah, I’m going to pay the taxes on them. Nothing’s free and no one knows that better than women trying to crack that glass ceiling.”

And with the science lie, she once again proves her shallowness in thinking the American people will laugh at the concept of studying the fruit fly without really understanding what that science gains, for all of us.

The list just goes on. But it takes too much time to explain why her lack of intellectual appreciation of science or her skim-the-surface understanding of the earmark and budget system (and why it’s developed) so the wardrobe malfunction becomes what I—and the blogosphere—use to highlight her inherent problem. Which is her complete cynicism about what is really troubling America. She thinks a few folksy winks and stories about her earrings will fool people into thinking she “gets” the issues. But Americans have interesting instincts.

I’m a fashion-aholic and I have no problem with her wearing Valentino and Jimmy Choo. But as a political junkie, I have a problem with her trying to claim one status while portraying another. I have a problem with her attempts to snow the voters. Because Americans are busy, tired, weary, and over-inundated with sound bites. Here I am, with no kids and on a sabbatical from work and I can barely find the time to do all that’s needed to run a simple two-person household and keep up with election, war, and economic news. McCain and Palin are abusing that, and it’s going badly and I find it, as Bill Maher does, cynical; cynical to constantly think that the American people are so stupid as to fall for these tropes.

I can’t trust the American independent voter. I don’t believe they are applying any more judgment in this election than they did in 2004. But Obama is keying into what they want now and need in a way that Bush did in 2004 and in which McCain and Palin so spectacularly are not doing now. And at least Obama is trying to find a way to increase productivity in people’s lives. Worries about healthcare are a constant drain. Worrying about the wars is a constant headache. Worrying about the price of gas and how we can wean ourselves off of it are is nonstop acid reflux.

At some point Americans are going to have to start demanding increased productivity in their lives so as to better understand how they live them. And the only way to do that is to decrease the demands on our lives. I do believe this is a first step in this process, by shrugging off the politics as usual (Obama, no matter what you think of him, is anything but usual). The 30-second sound bite as the basis for a decision must die.

My God's Bigger Than Your God!

It’s Sunday so it’s a good time to talk religion. Particularly since anyone who might be offended is probably at church and this will probably roll off their Facebook news feed before they get back.

I am not, as anyone who knows me, religious in any way. I don’t subscribe to any documented faith-based doctrine or cult. I tend to go after Catholicism the most, because I was initially raised Catholic, attended Catholic schools, and summarily shook off any belief in the system before I got my driver’s license. By extension, I am usually dismissive of Christianity overall in part thanks to the unwelcome influence it has played in my constitutionally guaranteed secular life. So that is why, without defending or advocating any other religion, I’m disgusted by the opening prayer at a recent McCain campaign stop in Iowa. It went:

"There are millions of people around this world praying to their God -- whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah -- that [McCain's] opponent wins for a variety of reasons," Pastor Arnold Conrad said. "And, Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens."

The message is simple: Don’t vote for the black guy with the funny name or some people might think a four-armed Lakshmi, a three-eyed Shiva, or a fat guy staring at his belly button is bigger than the white-bearded snoozer in the sky and his zombie son.

That’s a whole new level of ridiculous. I was under the impression that these various doctrines didn’t acknowledge the existence of other gods at all so at its face, the prayer makes no sense. Why would the Almighty need to guard his reputation against other gods that don’t exist? But it doesn’t matter whether it makes sense. It’s a fear tactic. The other, the different, the non-white/non-Christian aspect of this country might actually count (never mind that the candidate is a half-white Christian). Facts and doctrine don’t matter in this culture war. Anything different is too scary. Forget that current day-to-day life these days is terrifying in and of itself. Change it to something other than more of the same is scarier.

It is at times like this I wish I had something to pray to, to make it all stop. But even the act of finding a god of logic, rationality, and reason is in itself an act of irrationality. My brain hurts. Because as soon as I read this I realized that this pastor is comparing gods the way men compare the size of their dicks. I was already appalled that MILF had made it into presidential discourse, now opening prayers are barely disguised penis competitions?

Vaudeville Joe

I love this ad! I mean it. It’s freakin’ hilarious and only makes me love Joe Biden even more. My god, his recovery from asking the wheelchair guy to stand up … I forgot how wonderful that moment was.

Here’s Biden’s secret. He is what he is and he always has been. He’s a liberal, intelligent, experienced Senator who talks too much and has made a habit more addictive than smoking out of tripping over his own tongue.

And it won’t touch him! At least not where it matters. This ad doesn’t make Biden seem dumb, it makes him endearing. The people who watch it and are appalled were already appalled by his views and were never going to vote for him period. Not only does Biden have a “just like us” feel (who hasn’t said just the wrong thing at just the wrong time?), we can feel he’s just like us while also being smarter, more accomplished, and more experienced. We all know that if any one of us reached the rarefied air of power, that we’d promptly make idiots of ourselves. And Biden’s been doing that for years! While still accomplishing a great deal for this country.

There’s no fear in electing a Joe Biden type. You might fear his positions, but you don’t fear being surprised by him. The fear of McCain/Palin is that I don’t what they will do in response to an unscripted situation. And the world is an unscripted place. Palin’s gaffes are of a very different variety than Biden’s. They are gaffes born of a broad and deep ignorance of the world and this nation. They are gaffes driven by covering up what she doesn’t know, rather than just tripping over her own tongue. They are gaffes continued by her inability to laugh at herself (I can think of a million ways I could have turned seeing Russia from my house into a Biden-style endearing quality rather than mockery). They are gaffes unforgiven because she just continues to make them over and over again. Whereas with Biden, you know exactly what he means, he just has some twisted version of Tourette’s. Biden’s gaffes are more akin to puking on the Japanese Prime Minister (the gold standard for presidential gaffes) than invading the wrong country (the gold standard for presidential mistakes). Even the vaudevillian tone of this ad negates any seriousness of Biden’s misspeaks.

God I’m looking forward to tonight! Thanks McCain! This ad is the perfect teaser. Though I doubt you meant it the way it will play.

Alpha Bitches

I wonder if Palin thought she would have it easy with Katie Couric. Couric's got a reputation (deserved or not since I don't really watch her) for being a soft and fuzzy type, and I wonder if Sarah thought she would get a female bonding type of interview rather than the tough one that Couric admirably delivered.

If Palin thought that, she don't know women. There was no way in hell Katie was going to let herself appear to be anything softer than a hard-edged news person out for the details. Couric's own reputation was at stake over this interview and if she'd lobbed softballs at Palin (like Hannity did), Couric would have been accused of going easy on Palin 'cause she's a woman. I don't think Katie was unfair at all to Palin, the questions she asked were for getting the details. It was Palin's fault she was unprepared for such a detailed interview and Palin's fault if she thought Couric would be at anything but the top of her game. This is female competition at its core, and Palin didn't suit up.

McCain and Palin just really don't get women.

Honey, Where's My Super Suit?

Unfortunately, like most Democrats, we sent our super suits to the cleaners because we thought--given how supremely badly the Bush Administration has performed and how summarily they screwed over their own base--the culture war was over.

I’ve always been able to respect the fiscal differences between liberal and conservative ideology. The core of each argument has a solid base, the end state is nearly always the same. The main difference between the two ideologies is the means by which we reach that end state and within that debate a lot of good compromise and good policy can be made. Where I get nearly tyrannical in my opposition to conservatives is in the “culture war.”

The election of Bush, particularly in 2004, drove me near crazy. And the reason for my rabid hatred of him has in its foundation the people who elected him and why, at least those voting for him based on the “cultural” issues.

From Salon (apologies if you can’t see the entire article; I’m never sure what is and isn’t accessible on Salon for those not subscribed):

The culture war: It's back!

The culture war is driven by resentment, on the one hand, and crude identification, on the other. Resentment of "elites," "Washington insiders" and overeducated coastal snobs goes hand in hand with an unreflective, emotional identification with candidates who "are just like me." Large numbers of Americans voted for Bush because he seemed like a regular guy, someone you'd want to have a beer with. As Thomas Frank argued in "What's the Matter With Kansas," ideology also played a role. As hard-line "moral values" exponent and former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer told the New York Times, "Joe Six-Pack doesn't understand why the world and his culture are changing and why he doesn't have a say in it." The GOP appealed to Joe Six-Pack by harping on cultural issues like the "three Gs," gods, guns and gays.

It’s this “just like me” identification that so gets to me. Because it’s not just that they want their president to be just like them. Then want all of us to be just like them. And I don’t want to be just like them. I don’t want to take away their rights or abilities to be whatever it is they want to be. But I emphatically do not want that for myself. So when they vote in someone just like them, it’s for the underlying purpose, I suspect, to make us all the same. Joe Six-Pack has every say in the changing culture. It’s just that I don’t want to listen to him. I don’t want to live like him. I want to protect his right to live whatever way he chooses, but I’m not Joe Six-Pack. I’m more Susie Oenophile.

Turn on the television and there are plenty of wholesome programming for their kids and families. What they hate is that they want their HBO and keep it clean too. No. I want my raunchy shows on HBO and I’m willing to pay for it. I want edgier content, but I don’t expect to see it on the networks. That’s why I have cable. Go rail against the cable companies if you don’t like the way they package their programs (trust me, I could do without paying for Toon Disney and Blues Clues or whatever). But don’t rail against my culture as there’s plenty of room on cable for all of us.

Don’t like wine-drinking, latte-sipping, educated coastal types? Then stay in Kansas and stay out of my way. ‘Cause I like cuisine, fine wines, extensive and exotic travel, literary classics and writers that make me think, a film/television culture that pushes the envelope, gays, and the right to do whatever I want with my uterus. And my having that takes nothing away from the culture warriors’ lives unless they themselves let it. And if they do allow it, obviously they didn’t want it all that badly to begin with.

I want a president who is smarter, more experienced in how to use those smarts, and who has a broader vision of the world than just me, just Joe Six-Pack, or just anyone. I don’t want a president “just like me.” I’m not fit to run the country and neither are the majority of Americans.